Nils A. Kraemer1, Jens Otto2, Michael Hodenius3, Ioana Slabu3, Martin Baumann3, Uwe Klinge2,3, Andreas Muellen4, Boris Obolenski4, Rolf W. Guenther1, Gabriele A. Krombach1
1Diagnostic Radiology, University Hospital Aachen, Aachen, Germany; 2Department of Surgery, University Hospital Aachen, Germany; 3Helmholtz Institute for Applied Medical Engineering, University of Technology Aachen, Germany; 4FEG Textiltechnik Forschungs- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft mbH, Aachen, Germany
Polymer meshes are frequently implanted for surgical treatment of hernia. As, these meshes cannot be depicted with conventional radiological methods, aim of this study was to develop an MR-visible mesh implant. After incorporating superparamagnetic nanoparticles of ferrofluids into the mesh-filaments, susceptibility artefacts enabled delineation of the mesh. As intra-abdominal air and scar tissue present with hypointense signal intensities too, positive contrast of these susceptibilities was achieved by using inversion-recovery with ON-resonant water suppression (IRON) sequences. In phantoms and animal corps, the ferrous mesh was clearly delineated using IRON-imaging. Consequently, this method can help to reveal frequent post-surgery mesh related problems.